Genuine productivity and progress destroys GDP. In a free economy, here’s how it should work: Profit is self-liquidating, and increased efficiency of producing things with less labor and capital — or even reproducing things like information at zero marginal cost — is passed on to the consumer in the form of lower prices. This means it takes less labor both for people to produce all the things they consume, and to earn the money to buy them.

The state can’t allow this to happen. Its copyrights and patents enable capitalists to monopolize the savings from efficiency as profit rather than passing it along to the consumer, and its regulatory entry barriers suppress competition from more efficient production technologies. That’s because the state — every state — works for the economic ruling classes that control it.